Did dinosaurs see shooting stars?
Yes! Shooting stars have been happening for billions of years, so dinosaurs would have seen them on clear nights, just as we do.
Shooting stars are not new. Space dust has been falling into Earth's air ever since our planet had an atmosphere, billions of years ago. So when dinosaurs lived, between about 230 and 66 million years ago, there were shooting stars in their skies too.
If a dinosaur happened to look up on a dark night, it could have seen meteors flashing across the sky. There were no street lights in the age of dinosaurs, so the sky would have been much darker than most of ours today, with countless stars and perhaps more shooting stars visible.
The meteor showers would have been different, though. Today's showers, such as the Perseids and Geminids, come from comets and asteroids whose dust trails are probably only thousands of years old. In the dinosaurs' time, other comets made other showers that we no longer see.
Of course, about 66 million years ago, some dinosaurs may have seen something much bigger: the giant asteroid that struck what is now Mexico and made the Chicxulub crater. Scientists think it caused enormous fires, darkness and cold that led to the end of most dinosaurs. But their bird relatives survived, so in a way, dinosaurs, as birds, still see shooting stars today!